Eight years ago, I was addicted to social media and it was affecting my life. I probably wasn't as bad as other people but I couldn't sit down to study for 15 minutes without my fingers, on their own volition, navigating to facebook and doomscrolling.

...Forty-five minutes later that I'll never get back and I'd wake up realizing that I'd somehow lost track of the studying I was doing. It was a small thing that I noticed, something almost imperceptible, that moment when your fingers swipe to the icon or type the url without even thinking. This is called muscle memory and once those pathways get wired into your brain, it's incredible difficult to break the habit.

Over the next few years, I largely weaned myself of social media while simultaneously trying to strengthen my relationships offline. Those methods are for a different time.

Now, I'm trying to use social media intelligently, to get back online and in touch with more people but also not get sucked in and lose hours of my day to petty online drama. Social media companies spend a lot of time and money manipulating the relationship between pixels and neurons to get people hooked on their services so this will be a careful balance. Below are the ways I'm working on getting back online:

Put the apps on your home screen

This first strategy reverse engineers the adage "out of sight, out of mind". Put Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and everything else you want to use more often on your home screen. Make sure everything is within a thumbs reach without having to search for anything.

When I was trying to get myself off social media, moving the apps from my home screen and deep into my app drawer kept me from scrolling. I wasn't ready for the commitment (or lack of commitment) that comes with actually uninstalling the apps from my phone.

Turn on notifications

There is nothing more pavlovian than turning on notifications. Like a small little floofer, salivating when there is a bell rung, few people are able to resist picking up their phone when they hear the iphone bell chime.

Make sure to turn on the following to ensure you miss NOTHING: sounds (on loud), vibrate, banner notifications, wake screen, notification center, iwatch vibration, iwatch sound. Protip, make sure you interrupt everything you to check your iwatch and phone when it vibrates, this does not exclude medical procedures.

Always have your phone within arms reach.

Tuck your phone under pillow at night, you never know when you're going to get that emergency text. Make sure to keep your phone on loud. If you can't ensure that your phone is safe under your head while you're sleeping, make sure it's at least by your table and can be retrieved in the morning without leaving bed.

Make social media your homepage

This is a tip that requires old technology, but if you make your home page your favorite social media site you won't have to even think about getting on social once you open your browser. Bonus points if you set up your favorite browser to automatically open up multiple tabs of your social media sites when you sit down at your computer.

Hack into the most energizing emotions

There is a short list of emotions that can be used to hack your brain into engaging on posts. All of the best social medial companies and advertisement companies hack into these emotions to increase the odds their posts go viral and reach the most amount of people possible. Following that tap into these emotions can increase your engagement with social media.

Psychologists have divided some emotions into a new category: arousal. This is the fun kind of arousal that we learn about in the first grade about our bodies changing — well I guess I can be — but this is more about the kinds of emotions that energize people into taking a particular action. Arousal, in this sense, is a state of activation or readiness for action. High sympathetic tone, your blood pressure rises and heart beat increases. Your body is getting ready to fight or flight or share or tweet angrily.

High arousal emotions are things like: excitement, humor, anger, or anxiety. These kinds of emotions are used by the most popular social posts to boost how the post spreads like our favorite viruses.

I'm not using all of these tactics right now, but I will be over time to make sure that I engage more in our new reality. Which ones do you use?